The Fight Against Connections
by Hekate1308
Summary: Sherlock's mind palace exists through connections. There's only one room that's not connected to anything. Sherlock, Post-Reunion.


**Author's note: This is a post-reunion (yes, not Post-Reichenbach, post-reunion, aka Sherlock's back home) story about Sherlock, and a quite dark one at that.**

**Reunion stories are great, and Post-Reichenbach stories are great, but I can't help but think how Sherlock will handle the separation, and what he will do until he returns – btw, I usually choose three years as the time period he spends dead because that's the timeline in the books. Which I love. **

**I don't own anything, and please review.**

Nobody understands what his mind palace actually is, how it works. He is fairly sure not even Mycroft is aware of the way it is built.

John, of course – courageous, nice, trustworthy John – doesn't know either, and if John doesn't know, nobody does. He is, after all, the one who knows him best.

The thing is: his mind palace – it's just a name, really. Just a way of keeping track of all the data. But the rooms, the floors, the cellar – it's not what really counts.

What really counts are the connections.

Hundreds of thousand of connections, whirling around in his brain, making only sense for him. With these connections, he can figure things out, like what "H.O.U.N.D., In" means. With these connections, he can find out where people are, what people do, what people have done so far with their precious little lives. With these connections, he ensures that he's always the one who figures things out the quickest, who doesn't miss a beat before he answers a question.

The rooms? They are just points for the connections to bounce off of, to help make sense in this whirlwind of connections.

He hadn't even needed to build much of his mind palace, come to think of it. He'd always – from an early age – built the connections automatically, like he knew that the old Viennese term for undertakers was "Pompfüneberer" after the French word "pompes funèbres" – he never needed to read about and remember the connection, it was just there; the only thing he'd ever really had to think about, really, was to build a palace to house all the connections.

And there had always been connections, to make sure every last room, every last information in his palace was easily accessible.

But now...

Now there is one room, one point in his mind palace, in the farthest corner of the East wing, if you wanted to be precise, that is not connected to anything. One room that Sherlock actually has to go to, if he wants to access the information there.

There is a reason for that, of course. The reason being that Sherlock deliberately deleted and banned all connections that might lead him to this room.

The room that contains everything that has happened in the last three years.

He would happily have deleted it, but he can't just delete three years of his life – the gap would be too great for him to understand, and it's always been harder to delete memories than information anyway. Plus, as he defeated and destroyed Moriarty's web in these three years, the information might be useful one day.

That doesn't mean he wants it to randomly pop up because of a connection, though, hence he made that impossible.

Because...

Because, before he was forced to commit suicide, before he faked his death, there were some memories he didn't actually cherish, yes, but none that he couldn't bear to remember.

That has changed.

It all started with Moriarty's last game.

The very first thing he ever put in the room with no connections was the way John looked at him when they met "Richard Brook" and he actually thought for a terrible, terrible, moment that his best friend might believe he was just a fraud. _No, no, move on, don't allow any connection to form._

The second memory was the way Lestrade had reacted to his escape – not concerned, not panicked, just annoyed – "Do as he says!" – _no, no, he doesn't want to think about that, either._

And then – then there's his last phone call to John, and how Molly cried when he told her he was off to fight Moriarty's web and that he didn't know if he'd ever return – _and why does he feel bad about that, when he just told her the truth?_

How John's leg started acting up when he left the cemetery – _don't think about it, it's over and done with, no use to anybody to think about it._

Then, then, the next memories... That is when things become painful, when the memories are almost unbearable.

The first memory is loneliness. He, who's often been alone, but never lonely, suddenly suffered because his friends – because John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Mike, even Mycroft, for God's sake – weren't there, and he didn't have anybody to talk to, and sometimes he wanted to take drugs, and sometimes he twalked to himself, and sometimes he wished he'd actually jumped off that rooftop – delete_. No, don't delete, it was always there, every minute of the three years, he can't delete it. Doesn't mean he doesn't wish he could, though._

And – and then, there's the hardest part.

The things he had to do to destroy Moriarty's web, once and for all. His brain knows it was unavoidable, but this small part of him that's still clinging to some sort of humanity – wonders why, why, why, he had to be the one to have to do all of this.

There was this drug dealer in South America he had to torture for hours before he told him where the connections lay, who the bosses were. _And the blood, it still drips, and this boy, he can't have been older than twenty-five, and his screams, and how he begged for mercy, but he had to go on and on and on – think of something else, anything else._

The crime lord in France, who specialised in kidnapping, and killed his hostages when no ransom was paid (or could be paid), who Sherlock had to execute in front of his family, because there was no other way. _The wife, screaming, dropping to her knees shaking the body, crying out "Marcel!", the little girl demanding that "Papa" stand up, the boy too young to comprehend what had happened clinging to his sister. The blood, red, ruby red, in the sun of Nice, in front of the nice apartment building he'd lived in with his family, and Sherlock knowing he wouldn't be the last victim, on the contrary, there'd be many, many others, and not even he could predict yet how many exactly, and he didn't want to kill, didn't want to do this, but Moriarty had made him do this, Moriarty had turned him into a monster at last, which had always been his goal – he'd said "Thank you" after he realized they were alike, hadn't he? Oh, by the God he never believed in – no, no, this won't clean the blood, won't make him live again, remorse doesn't revive people._

The girl who'd helped him track down Moriarty's people in Belarus, because they'd killed her father a year ago, and who'd got killed for her trouble, _and he was too late, and she'd been strangulated, she had suffered, and her blank eyes held contempt and anger and reproach and – _

And there were so many, many memories, just like that.

Getting home, at first – it hadn't been much better. _John, who'd moved out and hit him when he'd realized he'd spent all these years in hiding, Lestrade, who'd looked at him sadly, Mycroft, who'd only, once again, said "Caring is a disadvantage", Mrs. Hudson, who' assumed John would instantly move back in – _

It got better once John forgave him, or tried forgiving him. Sherlock has the feeling that his friend still doesn't trust him.

Sometimes he doesn't trust himself.

Sometimes –

Sometimes he goes to the room without connections and begs for forgiveness he knows he doesn't deserve.

Then he closes the door and tries to move on.

He hopes he'll succeed one day.

**Author's note: A bit shorter than usual, but then, Sherlock is a difficult character to pin down.**

**I hope you enjoyed the story, and please review.**


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